"Changing curriculum is about changing your mind first and then forming some new habits and routines as you abandon old ones."(p.211)
I loved this chapter on Habits of Mind! The author states that our curriculum should be a curriculum of "processes", giving students "practice engaging with complex problems...and conflicts whose resolutions are not immediately apparent."(p.212) The 16 habits of mind apply just as much to adults as they do to students. They are the basic life skills we would like all of our students to take with them when they go out into the world. As we encourage these habits of mind, students become more and more self-directed, flexible, and able to persevere.
As the author says, for teachers to truly affirm the Habits of Mind in their own lives and classrooms, administration must also adopt the same Habits. Both teachers and administrators need to "learn how to become better coaches for critical thinking."(p.222) I would love to see a systematic approach to this in our entire school system, from the top on down.
The shift in learning from knowing the correct answer to "knowing how to behave when the answers are not readily apparent" (p.223) is very thought-provoking. I can see this would involve an entire change, for many of us, in our manner of teaching, and the life-long benefits to our students could be incredibly far-reaching.
Exactly!! Anyone can find the correct answer...all you need to do is Google it! The questions you posed here are essential, however. The more tech we have...the more we need human interaction and that is where the Habits of Mind come in. So, how do you start your faculty looking at the HofM? Your district must be doing something with them in some way.
ReplyDeleteGood question! I don't know...this is the first time I have officially run into them!
DeleteAfter reading about the Habits of the Mind I thought "I should post these in my classroom!" Perhaps posing questions and asking students which habits they would use to help them solve that problem would be a good place to start? Getting kids thinking about how they think is really is all about creating good problem solvers who are able to adapt when needed. I personally found this chapter really enlightening because I want my students to be good problem solvers so I pose a lot of problems to them. I wish I had thought about having them study how they personally think to help them become better thinkers!
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